Lionsgate, the distributor, has removed the most recent trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming film Megalopolis, which stars Adam Driver. The reason for the removal was the trailer used phony quotes from movie reviews.
On Wednesday, August 21, the aforementioned trailer was made available early. There are snippets of video from Megalopolis and title cards with disparaging remarks about some of Coppola’s earlier films. The late Pauline Kael of The New Yorker is quoted as saying that The Godfather is “diminished by its artsiness.” The Village Voice quoted the late Andrew Sarris as calling it “a sloppy, self-indulgent movie.”
But as Vulture noted, those remarks aren’t in Kael or Sarris’s sincere assessments of The Godfather from 1972. Reviews by the late critics Vincent Canby and Roger Ebert, as well as critic Rex Reed, also omit quotes ascribed to them. That’s right, they even dug up the corpses of dead guys to sell Coppala’s self-serving mess.
Starring with $120 million of his own funds, Coppola, 85, wrote, directed, and produced Megalopolis, which also had Dustin Hoffman, Aubrey Plaza, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, Grace VanderWaal, Shia LaBeouf, and Dustin Hoffman’s sister Talia Shire and her son Jason Schwartzman. When it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, it caused a stir. Critics gave it mixed reviews, and there were rumors that Coppola had acted inappropriately while on set. Little things, like trying to force kisses on actresses without consent.
“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,” a Lionsgate spokesman said. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”
After spotting his name in the Megalopolis teaser, Variety’s Owen Glieberman, who was previously at Entertainment Weekly, took notice and responded.
Speaking to his current outlet, he made note of how flimsy the trailer’s premise—that Coppola’s greatest works were initially misinterpreted—was in the first place. He said to Variety that “critics loved The Godfather.” “Though Apocalypse Now was divisive, it received a lot of crucial critical support,” Glieberman said. ” As far as me calling Bram Stoker’s Dracula ‘a beautiful mess,’ I only wish I’d said that! Regarding that film, it now sounds kind.”
Nothing lets you know a studio has confidence in a movie like making up crap for the marketing.
What do you think of the controversy? Did Lionsgate screw up in the latest trailer?
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